100 Days of Solitude

                Just thinking of those days in Bangalore makes me crack into chuckles, and at times, the very same thoughts send my mind sinking into silent reveries as well. ‘Those days’ happened quite recently though, hardly a couple of months back, when my better half decided that eight years was a long time to have stayed away from the loving embrace of our historical hometown of Trivandrum. Excitedly accepting a worthy & in all ways, timely offer, he took the first step towards home-coming, which meant that preferably I was to follow suit ‘as soon as’ the company I worked with would relieve me off my duties.

Hypothetically perfect PG room (in your dreams..)

                  And… ‘as-soon-as’, we soon learned, amounted to nearly a hundred days, which I was to spend in a PG in Bangalore all by myself, away from my better half and my little one. Everyone in whose ears this piece of news fell, (including my husband), snorted jokingly! Never in all my years of earthly existence had I been anywhere near a PG, except perhaps a couple of times when I might have got down from the wrong bus at the wrong place or owing to comparable episodes arising out of other frequent accomplishments of a similar nature.

However in the course of events that ensued, I did finally land up in a PG, though, thankfully I ended up sharing room with quite an interesting character, Priya (name has been changed to help preserve anonymity) , an Andhraite, now probably a Seemandhraite.. Though initially I found it unnerving to be away from the regular tête-à-têtes with my husband and the incessant chatter and laughter of my
darling daughter, gradually I succumbed to the vacuuming power of PG existence. The knowledge that my toddler was still merry, spending her days in the safe guardianship of her grandparents, and probably was eating tastier food than what she was used to having from my kitchen, was a source of absolute relief to my mind then. And the understanding that my stay was short, and in another three months or so, I shall be ejected free from this vacuum, solaced me furthermore.

                  Office was office as usual, but I had the unusual feeling that it was the only bit of home that was left for me to hold onto in the coming three months. Who would have thought that there would ever come a time when office felt more like home, than the place where you’d go back to, after work. Thanks to the amazing set of colleagues I had at work! I still miss them all for that matter. We were quite a unique lot… probably like all the umpteen ‘unique lots’ everywhere. But yes, we were a special bunch in some ways. 
                   Upon returning to my room I would find Priya sitting upright on the bed in some kind of a padmasana with her laptop. She always reached a couple of hours before me. With her face already plastered with some kind of glowing face mask recipe, she would have a number of cucumber slices carefully balanced on strategic parts of her face, additionally garnished with a few potato peels here and there to complete the vision of perfection. Severely reminding me of a mime artist, she would sit immobile, immersed in her laptop screen, watching on Youtube, the action clips of her dream celebrity ‘Powerstar Pawan Kalyan’. This was the daily grind.

“He is the No: 1 in South Indian cinema. He is the one & only Power star!” She would say vehemently, quaking some of the cucumber & potato inhabitants on her face, looking at the question mark on mine. With a strong sip at her coriander soup, which she drinks religiously every day for beauty purposes, she puts a full-stop to her point. After stashing away my heavy office bag to the furthest corner under my bed, so that I need not have to get even an accidental glimpse of it till next morning, I’d look into her potato-peel underlined beautiful wide eyes and silently chuckle inside, imagining what the Rajnikant brigade, the Kamal Haasan enthusiasts, the Mohanlal supporters or the Mammootty Fans Association would have said, hearing Priya’s power-packed testimonial. Diplomatically changing the topic I’d ask, “Hey! Does coriander soup really help you lose weight? What does it really do?” Priya would then keep down her laptop and wax eloquent on the 201 benefits of drinking coriander soup, which would all be bordered on some or the other means to brighten and whiten the ‘adamant’ Indian skin tone. I had often wondered how this tall, slim and elegant looking beauty of a girl happened to develop an obsession for all these weight-crazy.. complexion-crazy stuff. And when I did come to know the reason behind it, I could not say that I was surprised or shocked.

               What happened to Priya, had been happening far and wide in our nation, and in any event remotely connected to our nation all around the globe, as long as I could remember. Priya belonged to a family who sheltered very orthodox religious beliefs. Around a couple of months back , after carefully looking at all possible Kundali stuff that could be looked into from their religious point of view, a marriage proposal was made by Priya's parents to the family of a handsome young man, working abroad. He was the iconic ‘American Alludu’, the ultimate goal of every Telugu family with a grown-up girl gearing

for marriage. The horoscopes matched. The guy and the girl liked each other. She was beautiful, well-educated and held a privileged job profile with one of the best multinationals in the country. However, unable to contain his congenital idiocy, the father of this absolute dingbat of a gentleman declared that they did not prefer to proceed with the alliance, on the grounds that the girl did not have a ‘milky white’ complexion.

               Until the day Priya mentioned this awkward incident, which flabbergasted the limits of my rationality, I was only aware that discrimination existed on the grounds of being dark or fair, which all by itself was a terrible enough thought. Discrimination pertaining to ‘white’ and ‘milky white’! This was something brand new to me… When I was able to recover my speech, I managed to ask her a question. Had she been given a choice, whom would she have preferred to marry, a guy who did not have the spine to think and decide for himself, leaving his destiny in the hands of some colour-blind dimwit, or a no-nonsense guy who is mature enough to decide what is best for him and who has the capability to think beyond such supremely foolish notions like ‘white’ & ‘milky white’. With one of her famous shrugs, Priya replied, without any change in expression, “That is only if I have a choice, right? Leave it.”... Sigh... I sometimes wonder if Priya is still chasing the delusional ‘milky white’ illusion. I’d like to believe otherwise.

Jacarandas in bloom

It is during those days that I delightedly rediscovered something that had been missing from my life since a couple of years, my love for reading books, that love of mine which had been stashed away to the very cob-webbed recesses of my mind, to accommodate the various other intricacies of life and living.  I started hunting for books & every night I would go to sleep with a book, reading...reading...reading till my eyes drooped. Priya had no issues with my midnight tea-and-book affairs; perhaps she always had in her mind that the disturbance would last only for a few more days. I had also discovered a little restaurant nearby that was called ‘Muthassi’ (meaning ‘Grandma’ in Malayalam). Muthassi proved to be a very effective grandmother to me, and she mothered and pampered me on weekends with all my favourite fare, puttu with kadala curry, idiappam with chicken stew & soft crispy edged appam with spicy fish molly….mmmmm… And when I was not paying a visit to my cousins or spending time with my bro-in-law and his Yo-Gang in some mall, or trying to make a stand-n-read library out of some book store or mulling over the mechanics and dynamics of making rumaali roti at some way-side eatery or shopping for little treats for my daughter to take back home...... over the weekends, I took little walks down the crowded streets, taking in what the city was conversing to me with its ceaseless bustle of life.

                              I've always felt that Bangalore, the city with its passionate pulse rate, had always been in a state of interminable flux. It was an inspiring experience flowing along with the city’s incessant fluidity. I found joy in the slowly spreading

fragrance of the sandalwood paste and from the rhythmic sound of drum beats arising out of the Ayyappa Temple in the evenings. I chanced upon peace, sitting in solitude under the shade of the jacarandas in bloom at the St. Antony’s church compound. I also found that I needed to squeeze into my life the space to write again, as of old. Read as well, as many books as I can, in this lifetime. I was never an advocate of solitude ,and what I had been through can hardly be called 'solitude' in the true undiluted sense of the word. All these might even be a routine for so many people out there. But I hate being lonely all the time and I am not very good at it too. Yet I learnt that a spell of solitude, how much ever short it is, can do many things to you. For me, it was a party, where I had the fortune of bumping into myself and getting re-introduced to my Self all over again.

Photo Courtesy : Google Images